[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.]

Mountain View, CA, FEBRUARY 28, 2013 —
Crooked Tree Studios announces that its Kickstarter campaign has
surpassed the 50% funding level for
Throw Trucks With Your Mind, a multiplayer first-person
"gun-less shooter" that uses a wireless EEG headset to
measure players' brainwaves. Depending on the strength of players'
beta waves (emitted while concentrating), they can toss small items
like crates or catapult bone-crushing objects like trucks with up
to 15 other players, often with hilarious results.

A demonstration of
Throw Trucks With Your Mind was reported recently on
VentureBeat.com. Staff writer
Rus McLaughlin describes how the unusual player interface might
lead to stronger demand for neural feedback games:

"It’s a pure, giddy thrill when you launch something
across the arena just by thinking about it. If that emptied Throw
Trucks’ box of tricks, I’d still be fairly amused by
it, but [software developer] Ware’s building a much deeper
experience that casual and core gamers can dig into…assuming
Throw Trucks reaches its Kickstarter goal and actually gets made."

According to the game's Kickstarter campaign page, no
mass-audience video game "has ever demanded your mind's direct
participation to create the psychic powers occurring on screen.
Until this. After all, holding B isn't really the same thing as
thinking really hard about something. The more focused you are, the
harder you fling the truck."

Lat Ware, the game's programmer and team leader, set out to
create a neural feedback game that was pure entertainment and
entertainment and aimed at building a global audience for such
games. "If it's not fun, nobody's going to want to play it," he
said. But features of the game, like players' ability to draw
objects toward them by relaxing (and emitting alpha waves), hint at
the possibility of using elements of the game as a therapeutic
tool. Said Ware, "You could think of it as competitive meditation
training."

The pre-alpha prototype uses assets from the Unreal Engine, but
a Kickstarter campaign will provide funding for original artwork,
animation, music, sound effects, an array of whimsical characters,
and multiple levels of gameplay. Once released (in March 2014) most
Kickstarter backers will receive copies of this fully-realized
multiplayer psychic combat simulator, and sales to the public will
begin.

But Ware believes that successful Kickstarter funding will draw
the attention of venture capitalists who see the potential of
neurofeedback games as a new entertainment platform for mass
audiences. According to Ware, Kickstarter is an excellent tool to
do market research and test public demand. "Once investors see the
excitement that
Throw Trucks is generating," he said, "I think they'll
realize the possibilities, especially as the price of the headsets
declines and the capabilities of the headsets improve. It's just a
matter of time before something like this takes off, but we want to
be the first."

Ware is a veteran of the games industry, having programmed for
Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and All Points Bulletin, and he
is a graduate of Digipen Institute of Technology. Other team
members include Lynda Miller, character artist; Caspian Priebe,
environment artist; Kiyome Provost, technical artist; Matt Olch,
animator; and Casey Samulski, the game's writer and newly published
author of The Water Sign.

According to Samulski, "People are going to be able to
throw trucks at each other over the Internet by using the power of
their brains. And frankly, that's pretty dang awesome for a finish
line."